


someone, somewhere

by secondaudrina (firstaudrina)



Category: Gossip Girl (TV 2007)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-29
Updated: 2019-11-29
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:41:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21600112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firstaudrina/pseuds/secondaudrina
Summary: For three years, Dan and Blair ignore each other politely at holiday parties and charity galas. If you didn’t know them, then you’d never know they ever hated each other, let alone anything else.
Relationships: Dan Humphrey/Blair Waldorf
Comments: 45
Kudos: 246





	someone, somewhere

**Author's Note:**

> I imagine this is set post-series, but before the little flash-forward epilogue. Dan isn't Gossip Girl. No one has kids. Blair and Chuck are married, but Dan and Serena are not. Happy ending.

For three years, Dan and Blair ignore each other politely at holiday parties and charity galas. They exchange no-contact cheek kisses like they’ve never fucked against the wall of an elevator, and they inquire after one another’s partners with the amiability of strangers. If you didn’t know them — if the last decade plus of their lives hadn’t been exhaustively documented online for all to see — then you’d never know they ever hated each other, let alone anything else. That’s how it goes. Three years of careful tightrope walking, and then Dan makes a mistake.

It’s Thanksgiving and Blair has allowed Serena to host — and by “host,” one means she has agreed to let dinner be eaten at Serena’s apartment but overruled every other decision Serena tried to make. Blair even had it catered without telling anyone, so there’s a raw turkey left abandoned in Serena’s fridge and Tupperware full of uneaten side dishes. But the one thing Blair insists upon doing herself is making a pumpkin pie, which she does in Serena’s kitchen, arriving early, even before Dan. He hasn’t moved in yet. They’re taking things, quote-unquote, “slow.”

Blair is being a monster, as is typical. She has three separate bowls on the counter, which is spattered with flour and bits of batter, and she’s about to kill someone. Serena is no fool and leaves her to it with a wry eyebrow raise, but Dan is a total fucking idiot and always has been. What he should do is say, “Happy Thanksgiving, Blair,” and move on with his life, but instead he does something he shouldn’t. The mistake he makes is half-leaning over her shoulder and saying, “How’s it going, Waldorf?”

Like it’s four, five years ago. Like nothing ever happened and nothing changed, like their relationship is still as unexpectedly easy and intimate as it became for a very short time, that year and a half of Dan’s life when he went crazy. He feels Blair’s shoulders stiffen. He feels the change in her body at his closeness, at his voice. And instead of stepping away, he puts his hand on the small of her back for exactly two seconds. 

She clears her throat and starts stirring again, but her weight shifts just so, just enough that she leans back into him for half as long. “Better before you got here,” she snips, and he laughs, and he thinks, _oh no_. 

Blair is outside on the balcony during a gala, just a big white bell skirt against the sparkling New York night, narrow shoulders and a pile of brown curls. The bodice of her dress is covered with tiny fabric flowers. “All alone,” he notes. “Exclusive? Or misanthropic?”

She glances back at him with a twist of a smile, a look she hasn’t given him in years. He never thought he’d miss the days when she was mean to him, but, well. “What are you talking about? I’m the life of the party.”

He steps up next to her and lays his hands on the stone of the balustrade. It feels good, grounding. “You kind of have to be in the party to be the life of it.”

She shrugs. “I did my job. Chuck’s business partners love me.”

“Old rich people in suits: your target audience.”

“No, that would be thirteen-year-old girls with inferiority complexes.” 

“Are you in therapy or something? This is more self-awareness than you typically display. Should I be worried?”

“Mm.” Blair turns towards him a little, elbow resting on stone. “Maybe. Can I ask you something?

It’s been so long since they’ve talked like this that Dan is almost dizzy with it. “Shoot.”

“Are you happy?”

Dan smiles. “No,” he says, honestly. “We hate each other. Are you?”

In response, Blair’s face does an evasive little dance: her mouth opens and closes, her eyes flitting away over the cityscape. “No,” she says finally. “I hate him.”

His eyebrows lift in mild surprise. “Then what are you doing?”

“Following through.” She pushes off the stone and starts back towards the warmth and noise inside. “What are you?”

 _Waiting_ , his brain answers automatically, and it tastes bitter to him, and cruel, but true.

Some things are habit. Touching someone you used to love in the way you used to touch them. Picking up an old script and reciting old lines. Falling into patterns you thought you’d left behind. Just like Dan, seeing Blair Waldorf royally lose her shit in a crowded room, and being drawn, against his will, after her. 

She and Chuck have had a very public fight at the inauguration of his newest hotel. The details escaped Dan while he was busy perusing the buffet, but it’s the same every time: Chuck did something fucked up, rinse, repeat. Dan arrives in time to watch Blair turn on her heel and stalk from the room in an angry puff of tulle, leaving awkward murmurs and tapping phones in her wake. And Dan, because he is who he is, follows. 

He follows her out the door and down a long taupe hallway, out into the lobby and the street beyond. He and Serena have broken up, a sour conversation six years too late. He said he wasn’t happy with her and he wasn’t, couldn’t actually remember the last time he and Serena had made each other happy and not just some shade of jealous or relieved. Maybe they were still chasing snow in a closed room on Christmas. Their relationship was a snow globe on a shelf, picked up and shaken every so often, settling the same way every time. 

Serena said, flatly, _Blair_. And Dan didn’t want to be a bad guy, but in this instance he was a bad guy, because he might have let it go all the way to the altar if Blair hadn’t leaned into his hand. If she hadn’t given him a familiar sad-eyed look when they were far away from everyone else. He learned a lot about living in denial from her.

“Hey, Waldorf,” he calls, and she stops. 

“What?” Slightly intrigued, a little bit ready for a fight. Familiar. Her hand had been lifted for a cab, but it falls back to her side. Dan remembers, with sudden clarity, the way her fingers would flex against his back or shoulder when they kissed. She would clutch at him. Was that nothing?

“You going my way?” 

Surprised, she laughs. “Absolutely not, ew.”

“Share a ride anyway?”

They always liked the same kind of stories. Black and white with sharp dialogue and well-trod narratives, the comfort of repeated tropes. Heiresses who run off with writers; princesses who fall for journalists; society girls charmed by a well-turned phrase. 

Blair drifts in his direction. “Sure you can afford it?”

“I definitely can’t,” he says, and they’re talking about different things, but the same thing too.

Her fingers twine around the strap of her bag. Her body language has changed, her tight hunched shoulders softening, hip cocking almost flirtatiously. “Isn’t it a little soon for this, Dan?”

 _Say it again_ , he bites back. “It’s been three years.”

Blair smiles. People stream around them. A cab has stopped, but someone else gets in it. It’s almost Christmas and the air is frigid with promise. “Do you still?”

Her tone is teasing, almost mean, but her eyes are unexpectedly vulnerable. There’s something curious and hopeful in there. She always wanted to be chosen. And sure, she just had a big argument with her husband, and sure, Dan just broke up with her best friend, and sure, things are always fucked up for them. Such is life. “Yeah,” Dan says, could add, _of course_. “Did you ever?”

Blair smiles. “Yes,” she says.

They get in a cab together.


End file.
